Posts tagged freedom
Occupy Denver calls for 24 hours of protest
Nov 16th
24 hours of protest.
First Rally: Noon at Municipal Building @ 201 West Colfax Avenue
Second Rally: 6PM @ The Greek Ampitheatre in Civic Center Park
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: OCCUPY DENVER
November 17: 60 Days of Action
We have reached a pivotal moment in history, as we find ourselves on the threshold of a great and lasting change. We at Occupy Denver stand in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and all occupations across the country and around the world. The accelerated and coordinated efforts to destroy the Occupy movement, evidenced by the forceful actions taken against the occupiers in Zucotti Park and other cities, are confirmation that the Occupy movement is working.
These actions will not stop us; they will only make us stronger. This has brought us to the precipice of tremendous change, a change for the better. We believe and know what is right and good and thus we will take that next step.
The Occupy movement stands in sharp contrast to the forces that are being marshaled against us. When they use force, we use nonviolence. When they try to isolate us, we build community. When they move against us, we call for peace and cooperation.
Together, we are standing up and speaking out for the rights guaranteed by our Constitution: the right of free assembly, the right of free speech, the right of free press. We affirm that all people are created equal and have the right to share in the prosperity of our great nation. Without such rights, then what have we? We are committed to ending the corruption of our government and restoring political power to the people. We believe that our country, and our world, can be a better place and that we must work together to make this happen. To those already standing with us: we ask that you continue to stand strong. You are making the difference. To all the rest: we need for you to join us. We need individuals and organizations from every corner of the country to join the Occupy movement now.
We call upon you who have been silent: Speak and be heard.
We call upon you who have not stood up for what you believe in: Stand and be seen.
We call upon you who have yet to put your needs on paper. Write and be counted.
Make the difference and bring about the change you want to see! Join us at noon tomorrow, November 17, at Civic Center Park as we celebrate the two month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street and the nearly 2,000 Occupy movements that have sprung up around the world. There has been a coordinated effort to silence the voices of the 99%, Mayor Hancock and the Denver Police Department are scared of an awakened populace. We will call attention to the Mayor’s decision to violently crackdown on Occupy Denver. We will present alternatives and show the contrast with other communities around the country and how their local governments have supported the 99% rather than attempt to silence the voice of their constituents. There will then be a 6 p.m. rally at Occupy Denver after which we will conduct a General Assembly where we will discuss the Occupy movement as a whole and how we should progress over the coming months. So come out, have your voices heard and once again stand up for freedom, for justice, and for the future of our world. United we stand!
CU Boulder’s toxic avenger and teacher dead
Sep 20th
By Ron Baird
Adrienne Anderson had been an anti-toxics crusader⎯ helping poor communities and labor unions battle corporate polluters and crooked government agencies⎯for 30+ years.
Her targets included Rockwell International, the former operator of Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant and the subject of a federal Grand Jury investigation for environmental crimes at that facility; defense contractor Martin-Marietta, whose rocket fuel was suspected of polluting the groundwater of communities with high rates of cancer in southwest Denver; and ASARCO Metals, which has been accused of environmental violations at 94 sites across the country, including the recent revelation that it had incinerated 5,000 tons of hazardous waste from which it was supposed to be recycling heavy metals.
For more than a decade, the University of Colorado/Boulder Environmental Studies instructor taught her students to use the Open Records and Freedom of Information acts to ferret out and make public those dirty little (and sometimes big) secrets that lie in thousands of pages of public documents that are stacked on shelves, packed in cardboard boxes and file cabinets in government agencies like the Colorado Department of Health and Environment and the EPA.
She managed to survive 11 years mostly due to student support. But it was always a battle.
As a college instructor, Anderson and her students took on about 150 companies, collectively known as the Lowry Coalition, which had dumped unregulated hazardous waste into Lowry Landfill for decades before it was designated a Superfund site and closed. All, including the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, had signed a once-secret agreement with the City of Denver and Waste Management, Inc. to treat groundwater from the landfill and blend it with the effluent from a massive sewage treatment plant operated by the Metro Wastewater Reclamation District. Sludge from the plant is used to fertilize agricultural operations in eastern Colorado and the “treated” water is pumped into the South Platte River.
The political heat was cranked up to “broil” after Anderson discovered a 1991 letter from the Lowry Coalition to the EPA admitting groundwater test wells at the landfill contained high levels of plutonium and americium and pointing out that those radioactive components could only have come from Rocky Flats. After she went public with the information, Metro Wastewater executives engineered a smear campaign against Anderson, who was on the plant’s Board of Directors as a delegate of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, which represented the plant’s workers.
She subsequently filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Metro Wastewater.
Most if not all of Anderson’s accusations were supported by Pulitizer Prize-winning investigative reporter Eileen Welsome in her 2001 series “Dirty Secrets,” published in the Denver weekly newspaper Westword. Welsome reported that Lowry officials have bolstered their case that no nuclear waste is present by sealing up dozens of wells that had tested hot, which made further testing impossible. Then they drilled 35 new test wells outside the area of historic contamination, along with a slew of other Machiavellian sleights of hand.
Anderson’s continued saber rattling on the issue prompted a flurry of derogatory emails from two top officials in the Colorado governor’s office to CU administrators in late 2004 and early 2005.
Under this pressure, the high ratings and student support was not enough to protect her, and the faculty of Environmental Studies voted on Jan. 28, 2005 not to renew Anderson’s contract. They claimed the vote nothing personal; it was simply due to departmental “resource allocation priorities” and a “change of direction.”
Not even the Rocky Mountain News bought that bureaucratic backwash and published an editorial on Feb. 10, 1995, saying, “CU Making the Right Call on Anderson,” describing her as “an instructor whose rhetoric on environmental issues has been almost as reckless as the ranting of Ward Churchill.” Churchill was a CU faculty member who generated considerable controversy by calling some victims of the 9-11 attacks “little Eichmanns.” He, too, was fired from his job.
Anderson’s subsequent appeal of the decision was denied. But this time, it has been the CU faculty members who had come to her aid. They asked members of a prestigious faculty committee representing the four CU campuses to investigate. Their report revealed that the emails had been passed down to the same administrators who denied her appeal.
“If the intent of the emails was to put pressure on the university, the way they were handled ensured that this pressure was felt at all levels,” the report said. The committee recommended rehiring Anderson and funding her course.
Anderson released the report at a press conference on Sept. 17, 2006 organized by the American Association of University Professors.
At that time, English Professor Paul Levitt accused the administration of “abject cowardice” and in danger of becoming “a hand maiden of industry and government.”
Not everyone in high places had a problem with Anderson. David DiNardi, a federal judge assigned to hear Anderson’s whistlebower harassment case against Metro Wastewater, awarded her $450,000 in damages in 2001, as well as taking the somewhat unusual step of ordering Metro Wastewater to place a full page apology to Anderson in the Sunday Denver Post.
The judge noted in his ruling that then-Denver Post Editorial Page Editor Al Knight had become a “third-party agent” in the case by printing Metro’s allegations as facts.
In the decision he wrote, “This entire case is about a dedicated, conscientious and public-spirited citizen who, in following the tradition of Karen Silkwood, Erin Brockovitch… and others, has spent her entire adult life in pursuing union and environmental activities and in attempting to correct perceived wrongs and problems in society.”
Anderson has decided to forgo the final step in the appeal process because the same administrators who had been biased by the emails would be sitting in judgment again. Instead, she’s appealing to the court of public opinion, as she has for the past 30 years.
The judge’s ruling and award was subsequently overturned by the Bush administration’s Labor Department on a technicality. And that decision was upheld by a 10th Circuit Court of Appeals panel on a 2-1 vote. The two judges who upheld the Labor Department’s decision were recent Bush appointees to the court. This association is relevant in that the Bush administration has waged a relentless war on whistleblowers in federal agencies and even censured, harassed and dismissed federal scientists who have reported information that runs counter to his administration’s policies of promoting big business interests over public welfare. Recently, the EPA closed most of its libraries so that citizens like Anderson would not have access to information damaging to his friends and campaign contributors.